Hosiery for many years has been knitted in a string on Komet machines manufactured by Scott & Williams, Inc., of New York, New York. These machines have become a standard in the industry for knitting a wide range of hosiery for men, women and children. The hose are connected by a ring of Alginate yarn, which provides a break-away connection between the hose. This development has greatly increased the efficiency of the hosiery knitting operation.
To further process the hosiery, a "knitter" periodically removes the string of hose from the storage cannister on the machine, runs the string of hose on the forearm, grasps the final hose in the string and turns the hose. As the hose is turned, the "knitter" separates the hose by tearing the Alginate yarn ring. This operation presents the individual hose in an everted condition ready for sewing of the toe. This "hand operation" by actual motion and time studies has been shown to take approximately 60% of the knitter's time.
Various attempts over the years have been made to provide greater efficiency for handling the hose coming from the Komet knitting machine. The best "on machine" operation that has been accomplished prior to the present invention is a simple separation process accomplished by jerking the first in line hose away from the string, thereby breaking the Alginate ring. While these devices have worked, they have been generally unsuccessful in the knitting mills since the benefits gained did not justify the cost of the attachment, and maintenance problems have generally plagued such devices.
For the lack of something better, some mills have in the past opted for simply eliminating the turning operation by the knitter and perform what is known as a "turn-sew-turn" operation at the sewing station. This allows the knitter to handle a few more machines and thus does increase efficiency to some degree. The sewing machine operator performs the initial turning operation on a special turn-sew-turn machine thus providing a small net savings in terms of motion and time.
The most recent development has been the concept of turning, separating, stacking and tying of the hose on a separate machine. This development is represented in my previous United States Patent entitled "Hosiery Handling Method And Apparatus", U.S. Pat. No. 3,887,120, issued June 3, 1975. Improvements on my basic concepts are covered in U.S. Pat. No. 3,949,913, issued Apr. 13, 1976, entitled "Hosiery Handling Method And Apparatus", and copending application entitled "Apparatus For Handling Hosiery", Ser. No. 656,901, filed May 10, 1976, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,649 both issued to the same assignee as my inventions.
Up to the time of making my present invention, this was the most efficient machine and method providing the greatest net savings. This one machine performs the turning, separating, stacking and positioning for tying all in one very efficient operation.
As one will realize, this prior development does require the extra person to operate the machine. But all factors considered, the net gain over all of the old methods was substantial since a skilled operator can handle the output from a relatively large number of knitting machines, freeing the knitters to handle at least twice as many machines and thus eliminating the need for several knitters in a mill. In addition to requiring an operator for the machine, my previous machine also does require extra floor space in the mill.
Many experts have long contended that the maximum efficiency could be obtained by providing the turning, separating, counting, stacking and positioning for tying operations directly on the knitting machine. The reasons for this thinking are obvious since with such a handling method, the knitter simply ties the bundle and removes it directly from the knitting machine. The statistics available today show that this could increase knitter efficiency by 2 to 3 times, and therefore allow the knitter to handle upward of 60 machines. Under the old "hand" method where all of these operations were carried out manually, the operator could handle a maximum of 20 machines. Even over the improved methods that have come along including my previous machine and method, the efficiency is greatly improved, and of course, floor space for a separate machine is eliminated. Many, including myself, have long tried and failed to reach the goal of "on-the-machine" turning, separating, stacking and counting, and, insofar as I am aware, my invention is the first to achieve it.